God of All Comfort

Chapter 1

Why This Book Has Been Written

"My heart is inditing a good matter; I speak of the things which I have made
touching the king."

I was once talking on the subject of religion with an intelligent agnostic,
whom I very much wished to influence, and after listening to me politely for
a little while, he said, "Well, madam, all I have to say is this. If you
Christians want to make us agnostics inclined to look into your religion,
you must try to be more comfortable in the possession of it yourselves. The
Christians I meet seem to me to be the very most uncomfortable people
anywhere around. They seem to carry their religion as a man carries a
headache. He does not want to get rid of his head, but at the same time it
is very uncomfortable to have it. And I for one do not care to have that
sort of religion."

This was a lesson I have never forgotten, and it is the primary cause of my
writing this book.

I was very young in the Christian life at the time of this conversation, and
was still in the first joy of my entrance into it, so I could not believe
that any of God's children could be as uncomfortable in their religious
lives as my agnostic friend had asserted. But when the early glow of my
conversion had passed, and I had come down to the dullness of everyday
duties and responsibilities, I soon found from my own experience, and also
from the similar experiences of most of the Christians around me, that there
was far too much truth in his assertion, and that the religious life of most
of us was full of discomfort and unrest. In fact, it seemed, as one of my
Christian friends said to me one day when we were comparing our experiences,
"as if we had just enough religion to make us miserable."

I confess that this was very disappointing, for I had expected something
altogether different. It seemed to me exceedingly incongruous that a
religion, whose fruits were declared in the Bible to be love, and joy, and
peace should so often work out practically in an exactly opposite direction,
and should develop the fruits of doubt, and fear, and unrest, and conflict,
and discomforts of every kind; and I resolved if possible to find out what
was the matter. Why, I asked myself, should the children of God lead such
utterly uncomfortable religious lives when He has led us to believe that His
yoke would be easy and His burden light? Why are we tormented with so many
spiritual doubts, and such heavy spiritual anxieties? Why do we find it so
hard to be sure that God really loves us, and why is it that we never seem
able to believe long at a time in His kindness and His care? How is it that
we can let ourselves suspect Him of forgetting us and forsaking us in times
of need? We can trust our earthly friends, and can be comfortable in their
companionship, and why is it then that we cannot trust our heavenly Friend,
and that we seem unable to be comfortable in His service?

I believe I have found the answer to these questions, and I should like to
state frankly that my object in writing this book is to try to bring into
some troubled Christian lives around me a little real and genuine comfort.
My own idea of the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ is that it was meant to
be full of comfort. I feel sure any unprejudiced reader of the New Testament
would say the same; and I believe that every newly converted soul, in the
first joy of its conversion, fully expects it. And yet, as I have said, it
seems as if, with a large proportion of Christians, their religious lives
are the most uncomfortable part of their existence. Does the fault of this
state of things lie with the Lord? Has He promised more than He is able to
supply?

A writer has said, "We know what overadvertisement is. It is a
twentieth-century disease from which we all suffer. There are posters on
every billboard, exaggerations on every blank wall, representations and
misrepresentations without number. What visions we have seen of impossible
fruits and flowers grown from Mr. So-and-So's seeds. Everything is
overadvertised. Is it the same with the kingdom of God? Do the fruits which
we raise from the good seed of the kingdom verify the description given by
Him from whom we obtained that good seed? Has He played us false? There is a
feeling abroad that Christ has offered in His Gospel more than He has to
give. People think that they have not exactly realized what was predicted as
the portion of the children of God. But why is this so? Has the kingdom of
God been overadvertised, or is it only that it has been underbelieved; has
the Lord Jesus Christ been overestimated, or has He only been
undertrusted?"

What I want to do in this book is to show, in my small measure, what I
firmly believe, that the kingdom of God could not possibly be
overadvertised, nor the Lord Jesus Christ overestimated, for eye hath not
seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things
which God hath prepared for them that love Him; and that all the difficulty
arises from the fact that we have underbelieved and undertrusted.

I want, therefore, to show as best I can the grounds there are in the
religion of the Lord Jesus Christ for that deep and lasting peace and
comfort of soul, which nothing earthly can disturb, and which is declared to
be the portion of those who embrace it. And I want further to tell, if this
is indeed our rightful portion, how we are to avail ourselves of it, and
what are the things that hinder. There is God's part in the matter, and
there is man's part, and we must look carefully at both.

A wild young fellow, who was brought to the Lord at a mission meeting, and
who became a rejoicing Christian and lived an exemplary life afterward, was
asked by someone what he did to get converted. "Oh," he said, "I did my
part, and the Lord did His."

"But what was your part," asked the inquirer, "and what was the Lord's
part?"

"My part," was the prompt reply, "was to run away, and the Lord's part was
to run after me until He caught me." A most significant answer; but how few
can understand it!

God's part is always to run after us. Christ came to seek and to save that
which is lost. "What man of you," He says, "having a hundred sheep, if he
lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and
go after that which is lost until he find it? And when he hath found it, he
layeth it on his shoulders rejoicing." This is always the divine part; but
in our foolishness we do not understand it, but think that the Lord is the
one who is lost, and that our part is to seek and find Him. The very
expressions we use show this. We urge sinners to "seek the Lord," and we
talk about having "found" Him. "Have you found the Saviour?" asked a too
zealous mission worker of a happy, trusting little girl.

With a look of amazement, she replied in a tone of wonder, "Why, I did not
know the Saviour was lost!"

It is our ignorance of God that does it all. Because we do not know Him, we
naturally get all sorts of wrong ideas about Him. We think He is an angry
Judge who is on the watch for our slightest faults, or a harsh Taskmaster
determined to exact from us the uttermost service, or a self-absorbed Deity
demanding His full measure of honor and glory, or a far-off Sovereign
concerned only with His own affairs and indifferent to our welfare. Who can
wonder that such a God can neither be loved nor trusted? And who could
expect Christians, with such ideas concerning Him, to be anything but full
of discomfort and misery?

But I can assert boldly, and without fear of contradiction, that it is
impossible for anyone who really knows God to have such uncomfortable
thoughts about Him. Plenty of outward discomforts there may be, and many
earthly sorrows and trials, but through them all the soul that knows God
cannot but dwell inwardly in a fortress of perfect peace. "Who so hearkeneth
unto me," He says, "shall dwell safely; and shall be quiet from fear of
evil." And this is a statement that no one dare question. If we would really
hearken unto God, which means not only hearing Him, but believing what we
hear, we could not fail to know that, just because He is God, He cannot do
other than care for us as He cares for the apple of His eye; and that all
that tender love and divine wisdom can do for our welfare, must be and will
be unfailingly done. Not a single loophole for worry or fear is left to the
soul that knows God.

"Ah, yes," you say, "but how am I to get to know Him. Other people seem to
have some kind of inward revelation that makes them know Him, but I never
do; and no matter how much I pray, everything seems dark to me. I want to
know God, but I do not see how to manage it."

Your trouble is that you have got a wrong idea of what knowing God is, or at
least the kind of knowing I mean. For I do not mean any mystical interior
revelations of any kind. Such revelations are delightful when you can have
them, but they are not always at your command, and they are often variable
and uncertain. The kind of knowing I mean is just the plain matter-of-fact
knowledge of God's nature and character that comes to us by believing what
is revealed to us in the Bible concerning Him. The apostle John at the close
of his Gospel says, regarding the things he had been recording: "And many
other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples which are not
written in this book: but these are written that ye might believe that Jesus
is the Christ, the Son of God; and that, believing, ye might have life
through his name." It is believing the thing that is written, not the thing
that is inwardly revealed, that is to give life; and the kind of knowing I
mean is the knowing that comes from believing the things that are written.

I mean, to be practical, that when I read in the Bible that God is love, I
am to believe it, just because "it is written," and not because I have had
any inward revelation that is true; and when the Bible says that He cares
for us as He cares for the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, and
that the very hairs of our head are all numbered, I am to believe it, just
because it is written, no matter whether I have any inward revelation of it
or not.

It is of vital importance for us to understand that the Bible is a
statement, not of theories, but of actual facts; and that things are not
true because they are in the Bible, but they are only in the Bible because
they are true. A little boy, who had been studying at school about the
discovery of America, said to his father one day, "Father, if I had been
Columbus I would not have taken all that trouble to discover America."

"Why, what would you have done?" asked the father.

"Oh," replied the little boy, "I would have just gone to the map and found
it." This little boy did not understand that maps are only pictures of
already known places, and that America did not exist because it was on the
map, but it could not be on the map until it was already known to exist. And
similarly with the Bible. It is, like the map, a simple statement of facts;
so that when it tells us that God loves us, it is only telling us something
that is a fact, and that would not be in the Bible if it had not been
already known to be a fact.

It was a great discovery to me when I grasped this idea. It seemed to take
all uncertainty and all speculation out of the revelation given us in the
Bible of the salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ, and to make all that is
written concerning Him to be simply a statement of incontrovertible facts.
And facts we can believe, and what is more, we do believe them as soon as we
see that they are facts. Inward revelations we cannot manage, but anyone in
his senses can believe the thing that is written. And although this may seem
very dry and bare to start with, it will, if steadfastly persevered in,
result in very blessed inward revelations, and will sooner or later lead us
out into such a knowledge of God as will transform our lives. This kind of
knowing brings us convictions; and to my mind convictions are far superior
to any inward revelations, delightful as these last are. An inward
revelation may be upset by the state of one's health, or by many other
upsetting things, but a conviction is permanent. Once convince a man that
two and two make four, and no amount of dyspepsia, or liver complaint, or
east winds, or anything else, but actual lunacy, can upset his conviction.
He knows it just as well when he has an attack of dyspepsia as he does when
his digestion is in good working order. Convictions come from knowledge, and
no amount of good feelings or bad feelings, of good health or ill health,
can alter knowledge.

It is to try to help my readers to come to a knowledge of God in the plain
matter-of-fact sort of way of which I have spoken, and to the convictions
which result from this knowledge, that this book is written. I shall first
try to show what God is, not theologically, nor doctrinally, but simply what
He is in actual, practical reality, as the God and Father of each one of us.
And I shall also point out some of the things that seem to me the principal
hindrances to becoming really acquainted with Him.

I am so absolutely certain that coming to know Him as He really is will
bring unfailing comfort and peace to every troubled heart that I long
unspeakably to help everyone within my reach to this knowledge. One of
Job's friends said, in his arguments against Job's bitter complaints,
"Acquaint now thyself with God, and be at peace"; and our Lord in His last
recorded prayer said: "This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the
only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent." It is not a question of
acquaintance with ourselves, or of knowing what we are, or what we do, or
what we feel; it is simply and only a question of becoming acquainted with
God, and getting to know what He is, and what He does, and what He feels.
Comfort and peace never come from anything we know about ourselves, but only
and always from what we know about Him.

We may spend our days in what we call our religious duties, and we may fill
our devotions with fervor, and still may be miserable. Nothing can set our
hearts at rest but a real acquaintance with God; for, after all, everything
in our salvation must depend upon Him in the last instance; and, according
as He is worthy or not of our confidence, so must necessarily be our
comfort. If we were planning to take a dangerous voyage, our first question
would be as to the sort of captain we were to have. Our common sense would
tell us that if the captain were untrustworthy, no amount of trustworthiness
on our part would make the voyage safe; and it would be his character and
not our own that would be the thing of paramount importance to us.

If I can only say this often enough and in enough different ways to bring
conviction to some troubled hearts, and lift them out of their sad and
uncomfortable religious lives into the kingdom of love, and joy, and peace,
which is their undisputed inheritance, I shall feel that my object in
writing this book has been accomplished. And I shall be able to say, Lord,
now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy
salvation; and my pen has tried to tell it.

It must, however, be clearly understood that my book does not propose to
touch on the critical or the theological aspects of our religion. It does
not undertake to deal with any questions concerning the authenticity of the
Bible. Other and far abler minds can deal with these matters. My book is
written for people, who, like myself, profess to believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ, and who accept the Bible simply as the revelation of Him.

Putting aside all critical questions, therefore, I seek only to tell such
believers of what seems to me the necessary result of their belief, and how
they can personally realize this result.

Mistakes in the telling there may be, and for these I ask the charity of my
readers. But the thing I want to say, and to say in such a way that no one
can fail to understand it, is not a mistake; and that thing is this, that
our religious lives ought to be full of joy, and peace, and comfort, and
that, if we become better acquainted with God, they will be.